My name is Fred and I am a gay conservative living in Ottawa. This blog supports limited government, the right of the State of Israel to live in peace and security, and tries to expose the threat to us all from cultural relativism, post-modernism, and radical Islam.
I am also the founder of the Free Thinking Film Society in Ottawa (www.freethinkingfilms.com)

Sunday, March 07, 2010

Pro-Israeli scholar dismissed at centre studying anti-semitism...

Germany’s publicly funded Berlin Center for Research on Antisemitism and its director Wolfgang Benz improperly used their influence to dismiss a scholar from the editorial board of the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism, according to leading professors in the field.

Dr. Clemens Heni, a Berlin-based scholar who had criticized the center’s neglect of Islamic anti-Semitism and Israel’s security, has since been reinstated (in February) to the Journal’s editorial board.

In an exclusive investigative report, The Jerusalem Post obtained previously unpublished internal e-mails between the editors of the Journal and Israeli, American, German, South African and British anti-Semitism experts who objected to the removal of Heni from the its editorial board. The e-mail exchanges cover the period between December 2009 and last month.

“I wonder as to the role of Dr. Wolfgang Benz (director of the Berlin Center) in influencing the dismissal. It seems that this sorry affair seems to have arisen out of Dr. Benz’s resentment at having his (to my mind) misconceived arguments equating anti-Semitism with ‘Islamophobia’ properly criticized by Dr. Heni,” wrote Dr. Paul Lawrence Rose, director of the Center for Research on Anti-Semitism at Pennsylvania State University.

Rose also noted that Heni had revealed that Benz praised his Nazi doctoral supervisor and had refused to distance himself from his mentor, Karl Bosl, a rabidly pro-Hitler ideologue.

Heni wrote an article on “Anti-Semitism as Specific Phenomenon” in the first issue of the Journal last year. It included a scathing indictment of the Berlin Center, asserting that it is placating political Islam by playing down “anti-Semitic rallies in Germany” and dangerously conflating murderous anti-Semitism with Islamophobia.

According to Heni’s central thesis, while anti-Semitism among Muslims in Germany is spiraling out of control, Benz and his colleagues’ decision to merge anti-Semitism with hatred toward Islam is endangering the security of Israel and Jews.

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My name is Fred and I am a gay conservative living in Ottawa. This blog supports limited government, the right of the State of Israel to live in peace and security, and tries to expose the threat to us all from cultural relativism, post-modernism, and radical Islam.
I am also the founder of the Free Thinking Film Society in Ottawa (www.freethinkingfilms.com)